


Best-laid Plans

by valerie1972



Series: Scenes from a Blight [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Depression, F/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valerie1972/pseuds/valerie1972
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nola had planned to die on the top of Fort Drakon. Life had other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best-laid Plans

"I'm not sure I can claim that I loved him after all," Nola said, finally admitting out loud the thing that had haunted her for weeks. She  _had_  loved him, hadn't she? And he loved her. That was why everything hurt so much, wasn't it?

Leliana frowned at her. "How can you say such a thing? Of course you loved him. You wanted to die for him!"

Nola sat and rested her elbows on her knees. "He thought he was saving me. He thought he was doing the right thing, the kinder thing." She said these words aloud for the first time also, though they too had occupied her thoughts. Thoughts that wouldn't leave in the dark of night, in the coldness and emptiness and silence of her bed.

A warm thigh pressed against the side of Nola's own as Leliana sat beside her, and nimble fingers stroked through hair that she hadn't bothered to braid in days. The soothing gesture  had become familiar in the weeks since the archdemon's death - Alistair's death. Nola didn't  _deserve_  soothing, and said so, but Leliana persisted. 

"But you wanted to do the same,  _cherie_. How can his action be love and yours proof that it was not?"

She bowed her head and pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. Perhaps if she pretended that she was alone she could say it. "Because I knew."

There was a momentary pause of her ministrations before Leliana asked, "Knew? What did you know that he did not?"

Nola knew faces. Faces that would never speak or smile or laugh or cry. She saw them all, almost every time she closed her eyes. "I knew that death was the easy thing. Not the heroic thing. Not the hard thing."

Leliana just looked at her, furrowed brow not one of anger but of confusion.

Before her friend could speak again, Nola stood and turned away.

"And despite knowing that he would suffer the rest of his life, I still would choose the peace of the pyre."

**Author's Note:**

> This is an alternate to the previous scene in which Alistair does perform the Dark Ritual.


End file.
